but you crawled beneath my veins
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: "What are you doing here?" "You looked like you could use the company." :: Or how Ginny and Harry slowly inserted themselves into Draco's life and heart.


Written for the Around the World Event: TFYR Macedonia - Word: Tasty, the QLFC Round 13 - Appleby Arrows: Captain (reserve) - Queen: Write about a character that can be considered dominant, the Writing Club - Showtime: Somebody's Gotta Do It - (dialogue) "I hope you don't mind.", Count Your Buttons: (object) bucket, (word) champion, (character) Ginny Weasley, and the National Princess Day Event: Nancy Tremaine - Enchanted - Write about taking things slow.

This isn't quite what I had in mind when I first started but I think I like it anyway. Also, I one hundred percent blame Em for making me love this pairing. Go check out her stuff (CrimsonGoldQueen), she's amazing, seriously.

Also, this assumes that everyone came back to do their seventh year post!war.

 _Word count:_ 2530

* * *

 **but you crawled beneath my veins**

It felt odd, to be back at Hogwarts for his seventh year—well, technically this was his eighth, seeing as the Dark Lord pulling him out of Hogwarts had made sure he couldn't actually finish his seventh year.

In hindsight, that was probably the only favor that madman had ever done him—Draco hadn't really been in the mood for studying then, and he would probably have failed his NEWTs miserably.

But it also meant that all his friends had graduated already—or, in Crabbe's case, died. It meant that Draco was now rooming with boys he didn't really know, and who didn't know him either.

Alone, in a house that now resented him—half of Slytherin seemed to hate him for having been a Death Eater, never mind that a year ago they'd have been all for that, and the other half felt bitter about the way his mother had helped Potter in the end and gotten herself and her son off scot-free.

Somehow, Draco had the feeling he wouldn't enjoy this year any more than the last. But, hey, miracles supposedly existed—wasn't it time one happened?

And even if it wasn't… Well, Draco had never needed anyone before. He wasn't about to start now.

.

Draco had missed the food from Hogwarts last year. Even though his parents had House-Elves ( _used to have_ , he corrected himself), somehow none of what they cooked had managed to taste as good as the food he got at Hogwarts.

Maybe that was why he was so distracted he didn't notice who, exactly, had sat beside him until a pale hand reached out right past his nose for the toast.

His head snapped up, and he found himself looking right into blinding mess of red hair. For a heart-stopping moment, he thought it was Weasley, but then he realized that the face was too feminine for that, the hair too long. This could only be the Weaslette, Potter's girlfriend.

It was better, but not by much.

"What are you doing here?" Draco snapped.

The girl just arched an eyebrow at her, calmly spreading butter over her piece of toast. Draco was reluctantly impressed—he didn't think he had ever seen anyone make that gesture look so threatening before.

"You seemed like you could use the company. I hope you don't mind," the redhead finally said. She took a big bite out of her toast. It crunched loudly between her teeth and Draco watched her in horror as the noise continued. "Hmm, tasty," she hummed, licking her lips slowly.

"Not your company," he managed to get out. " _Leave_." And then, because he could hardly afford to antagonize the wizarding world's hero's girlfriend when his family's name was so tarnished, he added, "Please."

It felt a little bit like dying, or swallowing glass, but the girl beamed at him like he had given her the moon.

 _(She looked almost pretty like that.)_

She left after that, thank Merlin, washing down the last bite of her toast with a glass of pumpkin juice she had poured herself at some point.

She waltzed back to the Gryffindor's table, and Draco pointedly didn't watch her leave. Instead, he focused on fighting down the blush warming his cheeks as his housemates stared at him.

He did see the Weaslette reach her table and sit beside Potter, the black-haired freak dropping a kiss atop her head and tucking her against his side. They looked like the king and queen of Gryffindor, and Draco quietly sneered to himself.

It was hard to see from all the way across the Great Hall, but it looked like Potter and his band—plus the Weaslette, of course—were engaged in some kind of whispered argument. Draco couldn't tell who won it for sure, but he rather thought it had to be the Weaslette. She looked too smug not to have won.

That look, for some reason, made him smirk in his food. He stopped himself as soon as he realized it, and when he looked up, Potter was staring at him with a look on his face Draco couldn't decipher.

Draco blinked and Potter looked away, drawn back to his friends by the Weaslette elbowing him in the side.

Draco tried to ignore the odd sense of loss in his stomach too.

.

It was like at that first breakfast Draco had given the Weaslette an invitation to his table, and one she took gleefully. She came back the next morning, and the one after that, and the one _after that_.

Draco gritted his teeth and tried to ignore her and the way Potter's gaze seemed to burn on his shoulders whenever his little girlfriend sat by Draco's side.

Draco wondered if maybe he was jealous that the redhead chose an ex-Death Eater over the Light's Champion to sit with and the thought always filled him with vicious satisfaction. It was at least half the reason he didn't actually try too hard to get the Weaslette to leave.

Sometimes, he wondered how Potter would react, if Draco acted on all the terrible instincts Weaslette's little friends undoubtedly thought he had. Would Potter fight him or curse him again—would he try to make him bleed?

 _(And what would Draco do to him in return?)_

Finally, after almost two weeks of this, Draco snapped.

" _Why_ , exactly, are you still here?" he asked, glaring venomously at the little redhead.

The Weaslette's hand halted halfway to her mouth. On the other side of the Hall, Potter and Weasley started to stand up, only stopped by the mud—by Granger's hands on their arms.

"Harry said you helped him out when they got caught," she said after a pause. Her brown eyes, looking straight into Draco's, felt like they were seeing into his very soul and judging him. "I guess I wanted to see it for myself."

"So you and Potter talk about me, huh?" Draco arched an eyebrow, dubious. "Haven't you got anything better to do in your free time?"

She smirked at him like she knew something he didn't. "We do, sometimes. You're… interesting."

"... Thank you," Draco replied with his best polite smile. He tried not to shiver. "I'm flattered."

She laughed. "No, you're not."

Draco didn't reply, and she just shook her head with something that wasn't—that couldn't be—fondness.

She finished her toast and left.

The next morning, Potter dropped down on Draco's other side, handing Ginny the bacon the instant he was done with it. The gesture looked practiced, as though he and the Weaslette had done this a thousand times before—as though they always ate at the Slytherin's table with Draco.

Potter had a harder time ignoring Draco's protests than his little girlfriend did, but unluckily the Weaslette had him well in hand and every time Draco felt like he might be about to get rid of him, she intervened and calmed him down, smiling sunnily at Draco like they were the best of friends until Draco shook his head in distaste and Harry reluctantly rejoined the conversation.

Because, yes, to Draco's greatest horror, there was conversation now. He didn't know how or when it had started—or he'd have stopped it before it could get this out of control—but now Draco spent his mornings discussing Quidditch or homework assignments with two Gryffindors like it was routine.

Because in a way, it was routine to him now.

Somehow, the Weaslette—"It's Ginny, Malfoy, I know you know my name, and calling me the Weaslette got old at least three years ago."—had forced her way into his life and brought Potter "If you're calling her Ginny, call me Harry, _Draco_ " along with her.

They were relentless in their efforts in trying to secure his friendship, or whatever it was that they believed they were doing.

And slowly but oh so very surely, Draco accepted it. He started to like it, even, until one morning he woke up and found that he was looking forward to seeing Harry and Ginny for breakfast that day—and yes, he even referred to them by their first names now.

That was also when they started to branch out of merely meeting for breakfast.

.

Draco wasn't proud to say that he almost jumped out of his seat when Potter started to set up his cauldron next to him. For months, he had worked on his own during Slughorn's classes, since everyone else was either paired up or didn't want to sit beside him, and Draco had gotten used to it.

So to say he was surprised would be to downplay it.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he hissed between his teeth. He looked around to try to find Ginny and send her a 'what the hell?' look, but she only returned his uneasiness with a thumbs up and a wide grin that made him blush as she slid in the seat behind them—thus essentially taking Draco's place as the lone student in the class.

The situation was an odd mirror to that first time Ginny had sat by his side, Draco realized with a dawning kind of understanding he still didn't quite get. Only this time Harry was the one who made his heart skip a beat in his chest by looking at him with a half smile, while Ginny was the one who looked in on them from further away.

Slughorn called the class to order and started the lesson, announcing what they would be brewing today—but Draco couldn't focus. It was like Slughorn's voice came from far away, like Draco was underwater and only hearing distorted, slowed-down echoes.

His heart was pounding in his chest and his mouth suddenly went dry.

"I'm not helping you cheat on your girlfriend," he whispered harshly, glaring into Harry's emerald eyes.

Harry turned to face him, confusion and surprise warring on his face. "Huh, that's good? But, er, what do you think is happening here exactly?"

Draco kept glaring. "I'm not," he repeated. He chanced a glance at Ginny, only to find her spying on them eagerly. Draco blushed again and averted his eyes quickly.

Harry stared at him, then at Ginny, who made some kind of shooing gesture and rolled her eyes at him, before pointing at Draco. Harry's face lit up with understanding, and he chuckled.

"You think I'm trying to cheat on Ginny with you?" He laughed, a low sound that rumbled through his chest.

Draco scowled. "Well, what am I supposed to think? It's either that or she wants to cheat on you with me—which, by the way, I won't do either."

"Yeah, that's _really_ not what's happening here," Ginny interjected with a smirk. Draco craned his head back, twisting his neck to look at her, and she shot him a pointed look.

"What?" Draco hissed between his teeth, looking back at Slughorn to find him mercifully still writing the Potion recipe on the blackboard, gesturing at a bucket of frogs entrails as he extolled on their thickening properties in the step he was currently describing.

Ginny rolled his eyes. "I said, we're not trying to cheat on each other with you."

"Then what's going on?" Draco asked, frowning in confusion. He felt lost, he had to admit, and he didn't like it one bit.

Ginny's eyes flicked back to Harry for an instant, and then she sighed. "We just… We like you, alright? That's all. There's no great plan, no plot, we just… We like you." Harry nodded.

Draco gaped.

"Is that really so hard to believe?" Harry asked mulishly.

Mutely, Draco nodded. "Yes, it is. You've hated me for years, remember? You tried to _kill_ me not two years ago." He was pleased to see that Harry seemed to feel guilty by that, at least, even though Draco realized as he said it that he'd long forgiven Harry for his actions then.

"Well, that was two years ago. We've all changed since then—you most of all, I think. I-"

A shadow fell over their table and Harry shut up abruptly. "Anything you'd want to share with the class, Mr. Potter, Mr. Malfoy? How about you, Miss Weasley?"

"No, sir," Harry replied. Draco echoed him.

Ginny, however, smiled at their professor sunnily. "Actually, we were discussing the use of those frogs entrails," she started. It was only because of prolonged exposure that Draco recognize the gleam in her eyes as mischief rather than interest, and he bit back a smirk.

"We were wondering if it wouldn't be better to use _fresh_ intestines rather than preserved ones," she continued smartly. "Well, Harry here thought that it probably just was too time-consuming to use those in a Potion class while Draco argued that we use preserved ingredients all the time so it probably didn't matter. And I told them that you'd said preserving intestines could make them tougher and thus enhance their properties."

"Oh, of course," Slughorn said, nodding happily. "This is a very interesting point, Miss Weasley—take note, class. In fact, does anyone else here have an opinion on this matter? Yes, you, Miss Granger?"

And as Hermione started to monologue, Draco and Harry spun around. Ginny winked at them. "Come on, you can't think I never learned anything watching the twins make potions in their bedroom, right?"

Draco just stared at her. "How are you a Gryffindor?"

Ginny's grin sharpened. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"It was," Draco blurted out before he could help it.

She huffed out a laugh, but her smile eased and Harry grinned as well. They would have kept on talking but Slughorn had resumed his lesson, and while Ginny's excuse had worked this time, Draco was fairly sure they wouldn't get this lucky twice in a row.

Besides, it was time to gather ingredients and start brewing—there'd always be time to talk afterward.

But still, as Draco forced his mind to focus on the work, his thoughts kept drifting back to Ginny's words. ' _We like you_ ,' she had said. Just the thought of those words made his heart beat faster, but he couldn't fathom that they were true.

Perhaps he had simply misheard, or he was misinterpreting. Those words couldn't have meant what he thought they did. There had to be a mistake somewhere.

And yet, he still couldn't chase away the hope that maybe there wasn't.

.

Ginny kissed him twenty minutes after their Potion class was over. She pushed him against the wall and snogged him so hard his knees turned to jelly. He didn't even notice Harry had been watching until she stopped and took a step back, out of breath as she grinned brilliantly at them both.

Harry's kiss was softer in comparison, but no less intense. It was just that if kissing Ginny was like a wildfire, kissing Harry was more like embers stubbornly refusing to die out, flames occasionally licking out to the remnants of wood. Harry was Honeydukes chocolate and Ginny was Acid Pops, but together they made something even better just _work_.

Absently, Draco wondered what kissing _him_ felt like for them, but then he decided he didn't really care.

There were more interesting things to do—like kiss those two idiot Gryffindors again.


End file.
